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US says iraq violence down 55 perc { November 18 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8T06TIO0http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8T06TIO0
US Says Iraq Attacks Down 55 Percent
By KIM GAMEL
November 18, 2007
BAGHDAD (AP) — Violence is down 55 percent in Iraq since a U.S.-Iraqi security operation began this summer, U.S. officials said Sunday, even as at least 15 Iraqis were reported killed in bombings and shootings.
The dead included three children who were killed as they gathered around American troops who were handing out toys and sports equipment.
The officials cautioned it was too early to credit Tehran with the recent lull in overall violence, despite recent optimism that Iran was stemming its support for Shiite militia fighters.
"It's unclear to us what role the Iranians might have had in these developments, if any," said Philip Reeker, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, at a news conference in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone.
"It's difficult to read trends in reductions," he said. "To draw direct lines from that data — to say that there are fewer attacks and conclude that there's a particular reason for it. Vis-a-vis Iran's action, that is something we're not yet prepared to do."
Washington has accused Iran of training, arming and funding Shiite extremists inside Iraq. But in recent weeks, U.S. officials have said Tehran appears to have halted the flow of arms across its border into Iraq.
New attacks underscored the continuing security threats facing Iraqis.
A parked car bomb exploded in a predominantly Shiite area in central Baghdad, killing at least seven people, wounding 12 and damaging several cars and stores, police said.
A deputy finance minister who was the intended target of the attack escaped injury, police said, but two guards were wounded.
Nationwide, police reported at least 15 people killed in attacks including three children hit by a roadside bomb that exploded as they gathered around U.S. soldiers distributing toys and sports equipment in a playground west of Baqouba.
Overall, attacks in Iraq have fallen 55 percent since nearly 30,000 additional U.S. reinforcements arrived in Iraq by June, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman. Some areas are at their lowest levels of violence since the summer of 2005, he said.
Iraqi civilian casualties are down 60 percent across the country since June, and the figure for Baghdad was even better — 75 percent, Smith said.
Nevertheless, the U.S. military said several rocket and mortar barrages hit U.S. bases in Baghdad overnight.
"The fight we're up against has not gone away. Today's mortar and rocket attacks demonstrate that the enemy has the capacity to wage violence," Smith said. "We're working our way through those attacks and the level of damage."
He said Iranian interference continued to be a problem for Iraq's stability.
"Make no doubt...Iran has been the principle supplier of weapons, arms, training and funding of many militia groups," Smith told reporters. "That has not changed."
Smith said "a large number of Iranian weapons still exist here in Iraq" and how much Iran has stopped "training, equipping, financing and resourcing has yet to be witnessed or determined on the battlefield, but the trends are going in the right direction."
Meanwhile, the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday urged the Iraqi government not to follow up on the U.S. accusations.
"Since the beginning, the United States has raised baseless accusations against Iran," Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters.
On Saturday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iran was now limiting its support to fighters in Iraq, and urged Tehran and the U.S. to take advantage and hold a new round of talks on improving the situation in the country.
Since May, Iran, the U.S. and Iraq have held three rounds of talks in Baghdad.
Reeker said Sunday that he expected another round of talks soon, but no date had been set. "That channel remains open," he told reporters.
Reeker said future talks would address Washington's "concerns with Iranian activities that detract from security in Iraq."
Also Sunday, Iraqi police said bombs planted along Iraq's roads and in a parked car killed at least four people in separate attacks.
Explosives hidden in a parked car went off around 11 a.m. near an Iraqi police patrol in Mosul, killing three civilian bystanders and wounding at least 16 people, according to police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga. Five of those wounded were policemen, he said.
The blast caused damage to retail shops in the Dawasa neighborhood, and about 15 cars were burned, al-Wagga said. Mosul lies about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Farther south in Tikrit, a mostly Sunni Muslim town 80 miles north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded inside a police station, killing one policeman and wounding two others, according to police and doctors at a nearby hospital.
The officers had discovered the bomb on a downtown street and thought they had defused it, police said. Afterward, they brought the bomb to a station for further examination, and it exploded.
In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a gas station as people were lining up to buy fuel at the start of the work week. Three civilians were wounded, police said.
About half an hour earlier, another roadside bomb struck an American military patrol in a northeastern section of the Iraqi capital, police said. The U.S. military confirmed the attack, saying an American vehicle was damaged and that there were no reports of casualties.
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Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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